Britain’s Insanely Expensive & Utterly Pointless Wind Power Fiasco Exposed

By Paul Homewood

h/t Wolsten

Intermittency-of-UK-Wind-Power-Generation-2013_2014

Derek Partington, a former Chartered Engineer, has spent a lot of time in the last six years, researching the effectiveness of wind turbines. His findings are damning:

His report runs to thirteen pages, well worth a read. But some of his tables and charts tell the story.

For instance, how capacity utilisation can vary wildly from month to month.

And the large amount of time when wind turbines are producing next to nothing. Partington comments the data show no significant difference between the 2011 and 2013 periods and the 2012 and 2014 periods. In other words, the extra wind capacity built since 2011 does not appear to have improved matters.

He analyses September 2014, the worst month, showing just how irregular output can be.

A look at the maximums and minimums each day, using one of the typical months, shows a similar story, of just how intermittent output is.

The next table shows the minimum output recorded each month.

He comments, therefore the assumption that the wind is always blowing somewhere in the UK may be true, but at times it is barely blowing enough to generate any significant energy. In 10 out of the 24 months monitored, the minimum output dropped to 1% of capacity or less at some time. It should also be noted that the minimum output levels have not significantly changed since 2011, even with more wind turbines being installed. The equivalent average minima for 2011 and 2012 were 2.1% and 1.5% respectively.

 

He concludes:

Conclusions

Over the period studied, January 2013 to December 2014 inclusive, wind turbine operational capacity connected to the UK Grid has increased from 5,894MW to 8,403MW. The operational capacity in January 2011 was 2,490MW; therefore there has been an increase of almost 3.4x over the four year period.
The conclusions to be drawn from the data analysis are:

 1) An increase in the operational capacity does not improve average output. In fact the average monthly capacity factor has fallen over the periods studied, dropping from 33.2% in 2011 to 28.8% in 2014.
2) An increase in the operational capacity does not reduce the periods of low or very low output as measured by the number of hours per year when output was low (less than 10% of installed capacity) or very low (less than 5% of installed capacity). There is a variation from year to year but no pattern emerges. The mean low output over the four years was 1,617 hours/year with a standard deviation of 197 hours/year and the mean very low output was 599 hours with a standard deviation of 96 hours.

 3) An increase in the operational capacity does not reduce intermittency. If taken as a measure of intermittency, the average monthly minimum expressed as a percentage of installed capacity was 1.9% with no significant variation from year to year.
4) Taking maximum rise and fall in output over one hour period as a further measure of intermittency, the National Grid is now having to cope with variations in output of over 1,100MW over one hour periods, with this variation increasing by about 250MW per year. This is very significant as it represents the changes in output which the Grid has to cope with and which has to be compensated by conventional fossil fuelled power stations.
 5) An increase in the operational capacity does not indicate any possibility of closing any conventional, fossil-fuel power stations as there is no correlation between variations in output from wind turbines and demand on the Grid. Often the opposite is true – when demand rises, output from wind turbines falls and vice versa. This has a significant negative effect as back-up has to be provided from conventional, fossil-fuel power stations not only to cater for increase in demand on the Grid at peak times but also to cover for any possible fall in output from the UK wind turbine fleet at the same time.
Therefore, taking the four criteria above, there is no case for a continued increase in the number of wind turbines connected to the Grid.
As stated in my previous report, it is incumbent upon the Government to ensure that the British consumer is getting value for money from industrial wind turbine installations and that they are not just paying subsidies to developers and operators (through ROCs) whilst getting nothing back in return in terms of CO2 emission reductions through the supplanting of fossil-fuelled power generation.
Based on the results of this and my previous analysis I cannot see why any policy for the continued increase in the number of wind turbines connected to the Grid can be justified.

 

The full report can be seen here:

Intermittency-of-UK-Wind-Power-Generation-2013_2014

About the Author

 
Derek Partington has a degree in Physics. He was formerly a Chartered Engineer and a member of both the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Measurement and Control.
He worked for British Steel for 30 years and Local Government for 10 years, in both cases as a Project Manager and Business Analyst.
He has been undertaking research into wind turbines for over 6 years.